Sean E. Britten

It’s late, the dreamer stirs, and the walls between realities grows thin. Racing to catch the last train of the night, a traveller ends up at a destination very, very far from home.

======

Sneakers slapping the linoleum, I sprinted into the cavernous entry of the train station. At that time on a weeknight, even though the hall was as long as a football field it was practically empty. A grey hoodie, pulled over my cook whites, flapped behind me as I ran. My backpack bounced on my shoulder.

You’re never going to make it. I don’t know why you’re running, you’ve already missed it.

I was running because maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t missed my train. Maybe it was running a little late too. I was running because if I had missed it then my trip was going to take an hour and a half on the buses instead of half an hour on the train and I wouldn’t get to bed until after 2am. I’d worked twelve hours and I just wanted to be home and getting some sleep before I had to work again tomorrow.

I slowed to wrestle the wallet out of my pocket, and didn’t see the homeless guy until he lurched right up beside me. For a split-second, I smelled him before I saw him. A sour wave of old body odour and urine, sharp enough to sting in the nostrils. His filthy claw, a hand that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years, snatched me by the forearm. I turned and got hit with a fresh assault from his breath, reeking like methylated spirits and wet rot. A largely toothless gap surrounded by untrimmed beard, tangles of hair framing a face browned by suntan and ingrained dirt. He wore layers of ratty, once bright, unwashed clothing.

“The dreamer stirs,” the homeless guy said. “The hour is here and the walls grow thin.”

“What?”

“Lord of the wood.” He grinned as best as he could, gripping my arm harder. “Black goat with a thousand young!”

“Get the fuck off of me!”

I ripped my arm out of his grasp. Although I couldn’t see anything, I felt like he’d left grime smeared across my skin with his touch. He just stared and grinned. Turning away, I ran for the ticket gates and yanked the wallet out of my pocket.

Fucking homeless.

My heart beat a little too fast. I swear when I first moved to the city I’d been willing to give some cash, if I had it, to the beggars who asked or sat with their hands out. But it wears you down after a while, you stop seeing them. Except it seemed like there were more and more of them lately, yelling crazy shit, leaving their garbage all over the sidewalk. I felt a little bad for swearing at the guy, but only a little. It was the most aggressive encounter I’d had with one of them for a while but not the worst I’d ever had.

I hammered through the gates before they’d fully opened and kept running. If I’d missed the last train, it was going to be a long, angry walk to the buses. By some miracle, I saw the train ahead on the platform. I didn’t even check the screens to confirm it was the right one, there was no time. The doors chimed and started to close. Putting on a final burst of speed, I vaulted forward and leapt through the closing gap of the last carriage. The doors chewed my backpack then clamped closed.

“Made it, I made it.”

With a jolt, the train started moving. Lights flickered overhead. The carriage, like all the other carriages, split into an upper and lower level. I looked up and down the stairs and saw no one. I had the carriage all to myself. Pulling myself up the steps, I fell into a seat at random.

My heart beat too hard and my face felt flushed. As soon as the adrenaline left, however, I was overtaken by a wave of incredible weariness. The constant rumble of wheels over the rails lulled me. Lights flickered and seemed to go dull.

Can’t fall asleep now. If I fall asleep, I’ll miss my stop and won’t be able to get back.

After working all day, my phone battery was empty. My backpack didn’t have anything to read or to occupy my mind. I stared out of the window but there wasn’t much to see, just the sprawl of city lights after midnight. The train slowed as it passed a station, reduced almost to a brisk jog, but didn’t stop. I vaguely thought that was one of the stops the train usually made but my brain was too foggy to really wonder. Eyelids growing heavier, I fell against the seat and the rhythm rocked me to sleep like a baby in their mother’s arms.

When I jerked awake it could have been two minutes later, or it could have been two hours. Probably somewhere in between. Mouth dry, head swollen, I looked around in confusion. I was still alone. The lights were so low in the carriage they barely reflected off the windows.

“Shit, shit, where am I?”

Without my phone, I couldn’t check the time to figure out how long I’d been asleep. The display at the front of the carriage should have shown the upcoming stations but didn’t seem to be working. A series of meaningless glitches scrolled and scrolled across the LED screen. I looked outside and didn’t recognise anything.

“Shit.”

Lights flickered and the carriage’s speakers crackled. Expecting an announcement about the next stop, I sighed in relief. All that came from the speaker though was a low howling and an squeal of feedback. I couldn’t even tell if there were words in it.

I haven’t missed it, I wouldn’t have slept that long.

Again I looked outside but everything was dark and unfamiliar. A storm appeared to be moving in. Distant lightning strobed on the horizon. Houses and small apartment buildings ran along the tracks but I didn’t recognise any of them from my normal commute. I couldn’t see lights on in a single one of them, and no street lights either. Something in their silhouettes looked somehow decrepit. Damaged, and battered, a trick of the dark maybe.

With the same even rumble of its wheels, the train crossed onto an iron bridge. From its vantage, I could see for miles and miles. Everything was dark, I couldn’t see a single light along the shores of the river, or any of the roads and buildings back in the direction of the city. I had to wait for another burst of lightning to confirm there was anything there at all.

Blackout, it must be a blackout.

But that didn’t explain why I couldn’t see even a single set of headlights driving around. And the blackout would have had to affect absolutely everything except the trains. But what other explanation was there? Maybe it was something to do with the rapidly approaching storm?

The train passed the bridge and was surrounded again by trees and houses and low buildings, all dark. It slowed as it approached another station but didn’t stop. There were no lights on the platform and I couldn’t make out any signs.

“Damn it, I think I know where I am, right? We haven’t gone past our station yet.”

Another strobe of lightning lit up the clouds. A blue-white flashbulb accompanied a few long moments later by the crash-bang of echoing thunder. Rain began to splatter the carriage windows.

There’s something up there.

Lightning inscribed something across the clouds, as if it were being backlit. Lights on the train flinched and dipped. I stared through the rain smearing the glass into the blackness beyond the treetops. Another brilliant flash lit the sky. Clouds, they had to be clouds. It certainly couldn’t be any living thing undulating across the sky. They looked, insanely, like giant tentacles, rippling black on black. Some bizarre weather phenomenon. A few drifted toward the ground, tapered points and long, twisting bodies. And they seemed to be accompanied by another tremendous stormcloud, blacker than the rest, directly above the city skyline. A cloud that, with some imagination, looked like a vast head. Something with pincers for a mouth and mandibles and hard edges that didn’t look very much cloud. Thunder cracked against the train moments later, drowning out the rain. Underneath it I almost thought I could hear a keening wail, a sound some kind of animal might make. But no, there was nothing in the sky. That was insane. Something that size just hanging out of the sky would be enough to drive a person crazy.

“No, no no, this is a nightmare. I’m in a nightmare.”

I shot up with no real idea where I was going, just wanting to be away from the window. Grinding the heels of my hands into my eyes, I tried to wake up. I was so tired my brain was putting things together that couldn’t be real. Stars popped and crackled in my vision like static.

I need to find someone else. A train guard or another passenger. They can tell me where this fucking train is going.

Since I was in the final carriage, I started forward with hopes of finding someone. The doors between carriages jerked and shook as they opened, and lights switched on and off overhead. As I crossed into the next carriage, the lights went out entirely and plunged me into a complete and utter blackness. I couldn’t even see the glow of any emergency exit signs. With no ambient light coming through the windows, I couldn’t see my own hand inches from my face. The darkness only lasted a couple of seconds but combined with the swaying of the carriage it was almost enough to toss me off my feet. And worse, as soon as it went dark I was struck with the absolute conviction that something, not someone, something, was on the train with me.

The lights came back and I lurched to grab one of the poles in the entry section of the second carriage in case they went out again. Hurriedly, I scanned both the upper and lower levels of the carriage but couldn’t see anything moving. Lightning blazed outside as rain rattled against the windows, and thunder roared in response.

No one occupied the second carriage, or the third as I made my way along the train. I lurched from seat to seat, gripping their handles so I wouldn’t be thrown if the lights went out again, which they did. Twice more, the train plunged into darkness as if the problems with its lights were getting worse. Each time for just a little bit longer. One of the blackouts coincided with a lightning flash that seemed to strike just outside. The carriage was inverted from a pit of utter blackness to a chiaroscuro of shadow and pure blue-white light that drained the colour from everything else. I wondered if the train might be out of control. If the lightning might have messed things up, blacked out the city and fried the train. If we might just keep careening down the track until coming into contact with some form of immovable object, crashing and derailing and splattering me like a bug. None of that explained where everyone was, however. The train was late, maybe one or two carriages overall could have been empty but not the whole train.

Suddenly, something hit the train so hard I felt the carriage tilt. Glass and metal exploded behind me. I stumbled sideways.

This is it, we’re crashing. I’m going to die.

After that single terrifying moment, however, the carriage righted. Wheels screamed on the rails but the train kept hurtling forward. Something screeched in the upper portion of the third carriage where I’d just passed through. The rain and storm were suddenly louder, as if a window or door had been thrown open.

“What the fuck?”

I stumbled over to investigate, peering up the stairs from the entryway. Something had ripped a gaping hole in the side of the carriage, punching through the wall like a meteor or a falling tree. Rain poured through a gash big enough to drive a car through. Some huge, amorphous shape bashed and smashed amongst the debris like a bird that had just flown into a pane of glass. White and grey, its shape chaotic and shifting. The lights went out but I could hear it throwing things, shrieking, wheezing, whistling, its limbs lashing out and striking wetly against the seats and floor. Lightning flashed, bathing the scene of destruction and biological chaos.

When the lights returned, I could see the creature, whatever had just smashed its way into the train, drawing itself upright in the middle of the aisle. Stretches of rubbery white flesh overlapped with plates of grey chitin as thick as armour plating. Tentacles of various lengths and thickness sprouted and stretched across the carriage. Not two but three batlike wings, too small to support the creature, were spaced evenly around its upper body. Its shoulders, if they could be called shoulders, were topped with a bulbous and insectile head, complete with scissoring mandibles and antenna. I couldn’t see eyes, not on its head. After a few moments I spotted fist-sized eyeballs, spoiled yellow in colour, peering out from gaps between the creature’s armour all over its body.

The monstrous animal fixed its attention on me. It must have seen me through the windows and smashed its way inside. It wheezed and shrieked. The sounds seemed to come from a dozen voices at once. A tentacle lashed out, shooting down the stairwell and snapping right in front of my face. I screamed and hurled myself backward. The lights dropped and the train swayed. I fell to the floor. I could have been falling into eternity for all I could see, and as best I could I scrambled backward. My back hit the doors between carriages three and four and I screamed again, not knowing what I was touching, before the lights came back on.

The creature swarmed forward, filling the stairwell with its bulk. It moved like an octopus underwater, picking its way forward with its tentacles, its body flattening and bulging. Another tentacle whipped toward me and caught one of the poles. It wrenched the pole out of place with a loud bang, showing off its tremendous strength, and then tossed it across the carriage.

Scrambling to my knees, I hammered the button to open the doors between carriages and felt a wave of relief as they actually opened. Half-crawling, half-lunging to my feet, I propelled myself into the next carriage. The monstrosity rampaged after me. Its tentacles lashed out and smacked the walls and windows.

It’s a baby. It’s just a baby. One of a thousand young, a thousand little tadpoles.

The doors hissed shut behind me before the creature reached them. It started to rip through both sets. Crossing the entry part of the fourth carriage, I leapt down the next stairwell and kept running. The carriage was, of course, empty like all the others.

“Oh, God, oh my God!”

There was something youngish about the creature, in spite of its size. It moved awkwardly, like it wasn’t yet in full control of its limbs. Its tentacles and head could have passed for much, much smaller versions of the monstrosity I thought I’d imagined occupying much of the sky. I couldn’t think about that too hard right now or I might just go insane, give up, stop running.

Reaching the end of the fourth carriage, my way became blocked. The train would have been eight carriages long but they joined without doors in the middle. There was a train guard’s cabin instead. I hammered at the door, shouting wordlessly. No one answered and part of me was actually glad. I didn’t really want to know who or what might be steering or guarding a train travelling through this hellish alternative world. This wasn’t our world, I was sure of that much. The train, maybe in my sleep, had carried me into some bizarro and nightmarish parallel plane.

The tentacled creature followed my trail through the lower half of the carriage, bashing and tearing apart seats as it made its way down the aisle. I couldn’t move to the next carriage and I couldn’t open the guard’s cabin but I had to get away. I doubled back, this time heading into the upper half of the carriage. Twin tentacles lashed out, gripping the edge of the stairwell and snatching at me. One of them flared at the end into a flat paddle, like a squid’s primary arms. Its underside bloomed to reveal a vaginal mouth lined with hooked teeth. That’s why the screaming and wheezing seemed to come from so many places at once. It had multiple, disparate mouths as well as multiple eyes. The mouth snapped at me. I managed to slip past it and continued into the upper half of the carriage.

The lights went out as I staggered forward. The creature screeched. I felt the floor buckle under my feet. Could I stay out of its clutches by just going around and around the carriage, like some kind of demented Scooby Doo routine? Up and down, up and down, up and down? I doubted it. Already the baby monstrosity was on the verge of ripping through the floor to get to me.

“Shit, shit!”

Lights flared and flickered back on as I reached the end of the upper level. The creature filled the stairwell at the other end. Snarling, its tentacles grabbed for whatever came nearest. The train began to slow. We were approaching another station but, if the train continued as it had been doing, it would only slow and not stop. If I could make it back to the third carriage, I could maybe jump from the hole the creature created when it entered the train.

Not enough time. You’ve got maybe half a minute before the train picks up speed again.

As I returned to the carriage’s entryway, my eyes fell on a panel beside the train doors. ‘Emergency Door Release’ it read, with a lever behind a panel of glass. Other writing above the panel warned of fines for misuse. It was hard to imagine another situation that could qualify as an emergency more than this one.

The glass panel snapped into pieces as I struck it. Reaching inside, I yanked the lever down. Even as the train kept moving, the doors thudded and sagged in their frame. Wet air began to whistle through the thin gap that formed between them. The monster rampaged through the upper half of the carriage toward me.

Jamming my fingers through the gap, I pried at the doors. They still didn’t want to separate although the locks holding them were no longer engaged. With a jolt they fell open about a foot, then two. I shoved my shoulder into one and pushed harder. A gap the size of a narrow closet fell open, wide enough for me to jump through. The train had eased down to about its slowest speed, which was still quite a bit faster than I’d realised. The wet, dark platform flashed past. Running at top speed, I might have been able to equal the speed the train was currently travelling for all of two, three seconds. But I didn’t have a choice. The creature reached the top of the stairwell. As soon as the train passed the station it would begin to pick up speed again.

Fleshy tentacles with slash mouths under their clubs struck at me like cobras. I rolled and hurled myself through the open doors. Rain lashed my face. My outstretched foot struck something hard and slippery. I tried to hit the platform running but there was not a second’s hope of that working. My ankle twisted, wrenched like a pivot on which my entire weight turned. Tendons tore and the joint let out a pop that travelled through my whole body. I was fortunate I couldn’t feel bone break.

I spilled headfirst, still travelling with the train’s momentum. Tucking my chin against my chest, I tried to pull my arms in. My shoulder slammed into wet concrete. Over and over I rolled with no idea of which way was up. Two of my fingers caught against the direction of travel and snapped. I could feel the break but not the pain, not yet, travelling through my knuckles, my hand, and up my arm. After half a dozen hammer blows on different parts of my body, I came to a rest on my back.

The lit carriages of the train clattered past. Leaving the platform, it carried the monster away, into darkness, and disappeared. I lay there as the sound blended into the storm. Rain soaked my clothes to the skin. As shock faded, pain wracked my body. Groaning, I tried to sit up. Broken pieces grated together in my chest and back. My ankle felt like my foot was only being held on by my sock, a deep, twisting, nauseating pain. As I reached for it, my broken fingers screamed like someone was forcing shards of glass through my knuckles.

“Ah! Ah, ah, ah!”

Crippled by pain, I struggled upright in the darkness. Lightning strobed, revealing the length of the platform. I was only a few metres from where it ended. In spite of my injuries, it was suddenly important to get under cover. Not because of the rain, I was already soaked. There could be more of those monstrosities flying overhead. The one I’d just escaped could get free of the train. And worst of all, I was terrified of catching the attention of their big mother in the sky, if that was indeed what I’d seen earlier.

My leg hurt like hell but thankfully still worked. I struggled to my feet and limped back along the platform, whipped by wind and rain. I tucked my right hand, with its broken fingers, against my chest. With every movement I couldn’t help but make small, pathetic noises.

There appeared to be only one exit from the platform. A set of stairs led down to a tunnel, an underpass beneath the tracks. Surrounding it was a low roof drummed by rain, along with benches and a couple of vending machines. All normal enough. Lightning flashed and revealed the name of the station, ‘Durwich’, but it meant nothing to me. Whatever had happened here, this wasn’t my world.

If this isn’t our world, how the hell are we going to get home? The train brought us here, is there another that could take us back?

Refusing to look at the sky, I hopped beneath the platform’s shelter. I felt the weight of the rain lift off my shoulders. Tucked in on myself, I made it to one of the benches and collapsed. Deep, shuddery breaths rattled in and out of my chest. My body started to shake and shut down, like some internal janitor was making his final rounds and turning off all of the lights. My ankle and fingers and a few other places burned with every heartbeat.

I’m not sure how long I sat there before I noticed the dull glow and the sound coming from the exit stairs. It started small and gained strength to the point the light caught the corner of my eye. The sound, chanting, was barely perceptible under the white noise of the storm.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

Wary but desperate, I crowbarred myself out of the seat and limped toward the stairs. Standing at the top, I could see the exit below was locked with a barred gate. The orange glow and chanting came from beyond the gate.

Step by painful step, I struggled my way down the concrete stairwell. My left hand gripped the railing. My injured ankle strained to take my weight for the brief seconds it took me to hop from one stair to the next. I reached the bottom and rattled the gate but it wouldn’t budge.

“Hello?”

What looked like firelight reflected off the tunnel walls from a source out of my view. Shadows stretched and distorted and fell away. Suddenly, the darkness birthed a human figure that lunged toward the gate. I was too slow as their hand shot through the bars and snatched me by the wrist.

“Black mother!” the figure yelled.

“What the fuck?” I shrieked.

“Black goat of the woods with a thousand young! Black mother, Shub-Niggurath! Shub-Niggurath!”

A familiar stench hit me in the face. In the low light, I recognised the bearded face pressed against the bars. The missing teeth and ragged clothing. The homeless guy who’d grabbed me right before I got on the train, spewing weird shit then as now.

“You!”

I tore my arm out of his grasp. My arm was still wet, making it easier to get free even though I felt battered and weak. He stayed at the bars, reaching, grinning his horrible grin.

“She’s coming! She’s coming!”

“How do I get out of here? Do you know? How do I get home?”

The chanting stopped. Instead, I heard a low, insectile chittering coming from the tunnel. Movement suddenly filled the edges of the doorway all around the homeless man. Glossy bodies that captured the low firelight on their shells. A distant flash of lighting exposed the stairwell for a moment and I could see them more clearly. Cockroaches, or something like them, each about a handspan in length. Some combination of giant cockroaches, pillbugs, and crustaceans. Dozens of them spilled through the bars and began to crawl up the walls to both sides and directly above me.

“Oh, Jesus!”

I staggered back into the steps. One of the cockroaches sprung off the wall like a grasshopper and landed on my right arm. Before I could react, its mouthparts shredded through my sleeve and drew blood. Strips of flesh dangled from its disgusting and complicated mouthparts. Shocked and disgusted and terrified, I flung my arm against the wall without thinking. Fresh agony seared from my broken fingers. The giant cockroach was caught between my arm and the wall, and burst. Creamy goo shot the length of the wall as its shell crackled. Scores more of the creatures swarmed toward me.

Crying out, I turned and began desperately hopping and limping and collapsing up the stairs. Cockroaches popped off the walls to hook me. A couple landed on my back. One grazed the side of my head but thankfully fell off without catching my hair. The homeless guy remained framed in the doorway at the bottom of the stairwell, unbothered by the swarm of monster insects moving past him.

“Shub-Niggurath, Shub-Niggurath!”

I reached the top of the stairs and fell to my knees. Several of the creatures squirmed across my back and sides, mouths cutting through my clothing. As if on fire, I let myself drop and then rolled, kicking desperately, across the platform. I felt their bodies implode underneath me. Goo coated my clothing. Rolling out from under the shelter, I was sprayed again by rain.

Hundreds of the cockroaches poured from the stairwell, and from the railings surrounding the stairwell. Chittering, they closed in. I was left cut off, on a half-circle of clear platform that rapidly shrank.

“Go away, go away!”

Seeing no other choice, I kept rolling and let myself fall right over the edge of the platform. I dropped and landed hard beside the rails, brutal pain sweeping through my body. Nothing new seemed injured but the jolt to all my existing aches and pains was enough that I almost passed out.

In the next lightning flash, I saw the insects clustered along the lip of the platform. If I wanted to live, I had no choice but to force myself back to my feet. The effort felt akin to ripping myself in two. Staggering to the centre of the rails, I began to desperately hop and lurch from one sleeper to the next. Cockroaches flooded over the platform and gave chase.

“Leave me alone!”

I limped a short distance but I wasn’t fast enough. I could only push myself so far before my body gave out entirely. But at that moment, I realised the chittering was going quiet. I glanced back as lightning strobed and in the fading glow I saw the wave of glossy cockroaches retreating back toward the station. It was at that moment I realised the rain had also stopped, no longer pelting me from above.

She’s coming.

No, the rain hadn’t stopped. I could still hear it off to either side, and on the tracks ahead. Only the air surrounding me was clear, as if something was sheltering me from above.

“Oh, no.”

I looked up. I couldn’t see it, not yet, just black on more blackness. But I could feel it. A mountain coming down. Shub-Niggurath, black mother. She’d turned her attention to me.

Lightning strobed, retreating with the moving storm. It didn’t matter what I saw, I couldn’t make sense of it. The sky was alive and coming down. The air filled with pressure. An ungodly noise drowned the world, filled my head, crushed me to the ground. It was all I could do to draw air into my lungs and scream.

xXx

“Trains are facing major delays across the city this morning due to diversions in place on the northwestern line, so do allow extra time for travel.”

“Police have not yet released the name of an apparent suicide found on the tracks in the early hours of this morning. The line will remain closed until investigators can gather evidence that would rule out foul play.”

“If this story raises any distress for you, remember help is always available-,”

======

Sean: This is actually a rewrite of an old story, one I wrote for a university class probably around ten years ago. Obviously Lovecraft-inspired if you know anything from the mythos, big fan of his cosmic horror! Less so of his terrible views of race, although with some of his stories it’s hard to get one without the other.

Been a very busy time for my wife and I, we’re getting ready to move into a new place! We’ve been fortunate enough to buy an apartment right by a beautiful park in another part of Sydney, and have been getting some renovations done before we move in. I’m looking forward to sitting out on the balcony overlooking the park as there’s nothing I like more than just being able to sit and write or read and look at some trees.

Be sure to keep your eyes on the site! As I get past the stress of buying a home, I’ve been finding some fresh inspiration so there’s new stories coming soon.